


wrap your hands 'round my engines

by liadan14



Series: lover with a radar phone [6]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy tries not to be jealous about it, Coming Out, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Secret Relationship, Steve and Nancy clear the air, rating mostly for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 12:14:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21849478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Chicago is fucking cold in winter.So is Indiana, to be fair, but these last years, Billy’s got new scars, worse scars, that pull tight in the cold and keep him wrapped under two flannel blankets on the couch for the worst of the storms.The doorbell rings and Billy struggles out of his blankets, pretty sure that Steve’s forgotten his keys (again). He’s not exactly prepared to see Nancy Wheeler on his doorstep.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: lover with a radar phone [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571581
Comments: 28
Kudos: 515





	wrap your hands 'round my engines

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This fic contains a lot of swearing and some slurs. Notably, Billy uses the f-word to describe how his dad talks about him. He also refers to himself as "queer" several times, which I know is a controversial descriptor. I used it because that's how I imagine a gay teen in the 80s would see and speak about himself, but if it's upsetting to you be warned.

Chicago is fucking cold in winter. 

So is Indiana, to be fair, but these last years, Billy’s got new scars, worse scars, that pull tight in the cold and keep him wrapped under two flannel blankets on the couch for the worst of the storms.

It’s a good thing he’s got Steve, because he only needs to bat his eyes at Steve, ask Steve to take care of him a little, and Steve just…does it.

Billy’s never going to feel like he deserves the way Steve treats him, in bed and out of it, like he’s something to be cherished and held, but he’s also not complaining. For the amount of times Steve has called himself dumb, he’s definitely not dumb about Billy, because he saw through pretty much all of Billy’s fronting in about a half a second flat and he won’t take any of Billy’s shit. Instead, he makes Billy ask for the things he wants, and then he just straight out gives them to Billy. Billy’s sitting here, on the couch in their shitty, cramped two-bedroom, wrapped in a blanket Steve draped over him, drinking a cup of cocoa Steve made him, while Steve braves the miserable weather to go get some weird movie Will Byers told him about on the phone the other day from the movie rental store. Because he asked Steve to do all those things.

Steve fucking lights up all over when Billy asks, though. Just like he used to light up every time Billy showed up on his doorstep, asked Steve to eat dinner with him, to take care of his newest bruises and scrapes courtesy of Neil, or, more often than not, to fuck him through the mattress. Steve did it all, and he loved it.

So, Billy’s got a good thing going here that he’s done nothing to deserve, and fuck if he’s going to screw it up by pointing that out.

The doorbell rings and Billy struggles out of his blankets, pretty sure that Steve’s forgotten his keys (again). He’s not exactly prepared to see Nancy Wheeler on his doorstep. 

“What are you doing here?” He asks, rude. It’s his default. Plus, Nancy’s mom was trying pretty hard to fuck Billy summer before last, when he was both underage and too scared to understand what the deal was with Steve, and the apple doesn’t fall far from the bored housewife, or something. 

“Where’s Steve?” Nancy asks, arms crossed, suspicious.

“Out.”

“Well, I’m coming in until he gets back.”

Billy goes back to the couch, to his blanket and his cocoa and his _Complete Works of William Faulkner_. He leaves the door open. Wheeler can do what she likes.

He does a pretty good job at ignoring her for a bit there, pretending to read the book and actually really rereading the card he’s stuck in as a bookmark, the Christmas card Steve had taped to the book’s cover, written in his terrible handwriting and spelling, saying that he hoped it was what Billy wanted (it was. Steve always knew what he wanted. Also, Billy had cried for about two hours after reading _As I Lay Dying_ for his Intro to American Literature class).

Wheeler paces around, inspecting the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom. She doesn’t open the door to the bedroom, at least, and she hasn’t set foot in the living room. She probably thinks it’s Billy’s room, actually. He wonders what she thinks of their apartment. It’s small, and the ceilings are pretty low, but it’s warm and it’s comfortable and if she hates it, Billy’s going to kick her out. They keep a clean house, him and Steve. They’d both gotten used to cleaning, back in Hawkins, Billy by force and Steve by monsters, and it’s been a hard habit to kick. Billy finds he likes it, though, doing the dishes after dinner in their tiny kitchen while Steve dries them off, listening to the college rock station that Steve calls “fancy” because he couldn’t remember the word “pretentious” the first time they’d listened to it and Billy cracked up so hard the word just kind of stuck. There’s no one threatening him to clean up or else, so it’s okay to say, hey baby, let’s forget the dishes and fuck instead, and the first week or two they did that. But Billy’s actually happier just doing the dishes and fucking after. He wakes up at night, sometimes, when he doesn’t, feeling like he’s going to have a heart attack.

And how fucking lame is that, anyway? He got possessed by some crazy shit he absolutely refuses to call “The Mind Flayer”, got stabbed through the chest by it, nearly died, and he wakes up scared he’ll get in trouble for not doing the dishes. 

Steve wakes up from dreams that he saved Barbara to the realization he didn’t, and he gets all clingy and needy for days at a time, all but suffocating Billy in his attempts to prove that he can be good.

Nancy Wheeler knows none of this.

Steve gets back with pink cheeks and snow in his hair and a really fucking stupid-looking movie. “I’m really not sure about this one,” he calls from the doorway. “I think Will might’ve started smoking weed or something.”

“Steve?”

“Nancy?”

Billy wants to pull the blanket over his head, to hide in it, half afraid that this is it, that Nancy Wheeler’s back now and he’ll be on his way back to California alone.

He’s half psyched himself into being angry about it -- _Fine, Steve, who needs your fucking Midwestern winters anyway, I was always gonna leave_ \-- when Steve pads into the living room in his dorky as shit slippers, Nancy following him.

“Hey, uh, Billy?” Steve asks. “What’s Nancy doing here?”

Billy shrugs, straddling the halfway point between angry and scared, cocooning himself in his customary sullenness. “Ask her.”

“You haven’t been back to Hawkins in a year, Steve,” Nancy says.

“I know,” Steve says.

None of them talks for a bit.

“Dustin said you were staying away because of what I did, and that it was selfish of me because you have other friends in Hawkins,” Nancy says at last, and she must have finally realized how objectively dumb that is, because she sounds like she’s ashamed of it.

Billy snorts.

“I nearly died, like four times, in Hawkins,” Steve says. “Billy literally did die.”

“For like a minute, jeez.”

“It was ninety seconds and that town is the worst.”

It’s funny, because _Hawkins is the worst_ was Billy’s line, for a solid six months until he got skewered by a jellyfish with teeth on its tentacles, after which it abruptly became Steve’s line and stayed Steve’s line until Billy was up and walking and talking and applying for colleges.

“So, it’s not my fault?” Nancy asks.

“How often have you been back?” Steve asks.

“Twice,” she says. “Student housing in NYU closes during breaks.”

“How’s Jonathan?”

“Good.” She smiles, just a little.

“I’m glad,” Steve says. “But this is super weird, Nance.”

“Yeah,” Nancy agrees. “I guess Dustin was really convincing.”

“I talk to him on the phone. Every week.”

“I think they still need you, Steve,” Nancy says. “You were really great with them.”

Billy scoffs. 

They both turn to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nancy demands, hands on her hips.

“Damn straight Steve’s great with them,” Billy says, “because no one else is. S’not like you were paying your own brother any attention when you started screwing Byers.” Nancy’s jaw sets and she looks ready to start in on Billy properly, but Billy’s not having any of it. “I mean, what the fuck, princess Wheeler? You just show up here, in our apartment, to make Steve feel guilty for getting out of that hellhole? Make him feel like he should go back to take care of other people’s kids because you can’t be asked? Rub it in his face some more that you cheated on him and he’s too nice to ever call you out on it?”

“ _Bill_ ,” Steve says sharply.

“It’s fucking true.”

“Yeah,” Nancy says. “I guess it is. I am sorry, Steve. I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.”

“You did,” Steve says. “But it’s been two years, and it’s _fine_.” He says the last with a sharp glare in Billy’s direction.

Billy raises his eyebrows, sets his mug down on the coffee table. “Bullshit,” he says, enunciating precisely, and enjoys the way they both wince.

Nancy sighs. “I know I messed up badly, with you,” she says. “And you didn’t deserve that. I was going through a lot. You know what. I’m sorry.”

“Like I wasn’t going through the same shit?” Steve asks. “I went and sat with Barb’s parents for you like she didn’t _die in my swimming pool._ I spent like three weeks cleaning the monster gook out of that damn baseball bat because I was so scared the government would get me if the monsters didn’t. Why the fuck didn’t you at least break up with me the normal way?”

“I don’t know.”

Billy waits out their silence for what he thinks must be two full minutes. “This has been a great class reunion, guys,” he says, when he realizes neither of them are going to, “but, uh, maybe it’s time for it to end?”

“Nancy’s gotta stay,” Steve says. “It’s a blizzard out there.”

“The fuck she’s gotta stay,” Billy argues heatedly. “We had plans.”

“Jonathan’s waiting outside.”

“And you’re gonna, what, take the freeway to New York in a blizzard? In _his_ car?”

“We’ll get a motel room.”

“You can stay here.”

Billy’s tried to win a lot of arguments with Steve when he’s like this, and to date he has an impressively unbroken losing streak. 

He’s not exactly surprised when, after a ten-minute discussion, Steve leaves the apartment and comes back with Jonathan Byers, shivering in a coat that’s too thin and fingerless gloves. 

Steve cooks them dinner, fuming at himself and at Billy, a bit. Billy shuts up about it, grates cheese and chops onions and hands them to Steve when he needs them. Jonathan offers to help awkwardly, and Billy shakes his head. Steve in a funk is the worst. He’ll cool off by the time dinner’s done, anyway. 

“Hey,” he says to Billy, while Billy gets the plates out of the cupboard. “I know you meant well.”

“Yeah,” Billy says. “Sorry if I was too…me about it.”

Steve shrugs. “Kinda cute.”

Billy turns on him, blunt IKEA knife in hand. “Take that back.”

“Never.” Steve’s got this shit-eating grin, about to grasp Billy around the waist and pull him in, but there’s a gasp in the doorway and the apartment’s too small for secrets.

Billy’d said goodbye to the idea of secrecy the second Nancy entered the living room, but for a smart chick she’s been pretty slow to put things together. He’s not sure Steve has quite realized this is the end of them being a secret in Hawkins, though.

“Oh my god,” Nancy says. 

“Huh?” Steve says, still looking at Billy.

“You guys are—” Nancy starts. “You’re—”

Steve turns to look at her. “Huh?” He asks again.

“You’re with him!” Nancy says, making a weird gesture between the two of them.

“Yeah?” Steve says, still looking confused.

“I think she means we’re fucking,” Billy says.

“Yeah, I got that,” Steve says. “So?”

“So?” Nancy gasps.

“I thought you knew that.”

“I _did not know that_.”

“Wait,” Billy says, “why would she know that?”

Steve rubs a hand across the back of his neck. “Remember when you were dead for ninety seconds and I freaked out a lot? And I, like, never left your hospital room?”

“Oh yeah,” Billy says. “Yeah, that was pretty queer.”

“I thought you guys were just friends,” Nancy says. 

Jonathan peers out from the living room. “I kinda thought something was up,” he says. “Cool radio station, by the way.”

“Shit,” Billy says. “Does all of Hawkins know?”

“I mean, apparently not,” Steve says.

“But since when are you _gay_?” Nancy asks.

In the time it takes Steve to explain to Nancy that he’s bi, that she didn’t make him this way, that he and Billy have been together two years now, and what they’re both doing in Chicago anyway, Billy gets the pasta away from Steve, gets himself and Jonathan situated with some food in the living room.

“I’m not watching _Goonies_ again,” Jonathan says, eyeing the cover of the VHS tape Steve came home with what feels like hours ago with distaste. “Will made me watch it over Christmas already and I hate it.”

“Not sure we’ll ever get around to watching anything,” Billy says, because Steve and Nancy have finally reached the apex of this discussion, namely, _you told me I was bullshit, why do I owe you anything?_

“Hey, um, Billy?” Jonathan asks.

“Hm?” Billy is half-distracted, still fascinated to hear what’s happening between Steve and Nancy, still a little bit afraid that despite it all, Steve still loves her.

“If you ever do go back to Hawkins,” Jonathan start, pushing a bit of tomato around his plate, “maybe you could talk to Will?”

“Steve talks to the whole nerd squad on the phone,” Billy says. “Like, all the fucking time.” He doesn’t add that he talks to Max, too, that he’s even been known to exchange a few words with Henderson or Baby Byers when they call and Steve’s not in.

“No, I mean, like.” Jonathan clears his throat. “I’m pretty sure Will’s not into girls, either. And Hawkins…”

“Hawkins is a shit place to not be into girls.” Billy says. This is so not where he saw his evening going. He thought he was going to watch a shitty independent movie and ride Steve’s dick on the couch. Being asked to be Will Byers gay mentor did not come into it at all.

He tells Steve about it, quietly, in the dark of their bedroom when Steve and Nancy have finally said their share, have apologized for things that happened before Billy knew either of them, when Nancy and Jonathan have settled on the lumpy pull-out couch Steve’s fucked Billy on more times than he can count. Billy’s still feeling raw and insecure about Nancy, but he figures there’s no way he’s feeling more raw and insecure than Steve, who basically wrapped himself around Billy all evening and wouldn’t stop pressing kisses to his ear, his neck, the back of his head. He figures it’s Steve’s way of reassuring them both.

“I think you’d be a good gay mentor,” Steve says, arm flung loosely over Bill’s chest. “You were for me.”

“What.” Billy says flatly.

“I didn’t know I was into guys until you jumped me.”

“Until _I_ jumped _you_?”

“Yeah, at Tommy H.’s New Year’s party, don’t tell me you don’t remember?”

Billy sits himself up on his elbow to stare at Steve. “Stevie, baby, I was a confused piece of shit trying to get a rise out of you at that party. You took me home and blew my mind. I thought you knew…”

“You thought I knew what I was doing?” Steve laughs dorkily. “C’mon, when do I ever know what I’m doing?”

Billy laughs, but it feels wrong. “All the damn time.”

“Nah,” Steve says, stretching his arms up over his head. He’s a little less skinny than he was in high school, and he’s still wearing his reading glasses, and Billy is so in love with him it’s actively making him dumber. “You’re the smart one.”

“You got us this apartment. You got us out of Hawkins. You kicked my ass into applying for college. You’re gonna be the best police officer in the state in like two years.”

“Aw,” Steve says. “C’mon.”

“No, I’m serious,” Billy says. “You sell yourself way too short. I wouldn’t have survived Hawkins without you.”

“You _didn’t_.”

“I don’t mean the monster shit,” Billy says, exasperated. “It’s like a metaphor you numbnuts.”

“Not so good with those,” Steve says, smiling up at him. “Hey, I love you. And I’m glad we’re not in Hawkins anymore.”

“Right back atcha.”

So of course they go back to Hawkins over Spring Break. It’s only a week, after all, what could Hawkins do to them in a week?

“We could be getting drunk on the beach right now,” Billy reminds Steve as they blow past the chintzy _Welcome to Hawkins_ sign. 

“We’re pretty broke,” Steve reminds him. “Plus, you hate frat parties. Why would Spring Break be any better?”

“I could get too drunk to hear the music?” Billy offers.

“You’re just scared you won’t be a good gay mentor.”

Billy is scared of that, it’s true, but it’s still rude to point out. 

Steve has been pointing it out since approximately breakfast the morning after his and Nancy’s blow-out. Nancy had given him a serious speech about not hurting Steve before she left, and then proceeded to start calling their apartment on a weekly basis, mostly to compare notes on her English lectures with Billy and on her brother’s teenage relationship with Steve. Robin tells them all they’re creepily over-invested, but she always has the best details on what fresh hell Sinclair has gotten himself into with Max, so Billy mostly flips her the bird and tells her to go away (it never works, she basically lives on their living room floor during the semester, because “dorms suck, dingus”). When they offered to bring her to Hawkins with them over break, she had stared at them for two straight minutes and then said, “No, and also fuck no, and also why?”

So here they are, in Hawkins, standing in front of the perennially empty Harrington house. 

“Remember when we left?” Steve asks.

Billy remembers.

He had still been slowed down by his injuries a bit, then, walking with a badass cane Max had gotten specially painted with flames and skulls and shit, but the second he’d gotten his acceptance into University of Chicago, Steve had started packing up the house. He’d even driven by the Hargrove house and packed up Billy’s tapes, his weightlifting crap, his clothes. Billy hadn’t been back since Starcourt. Neil had made pretty clear he didn’t need a crippled, faggy son weighing him down.

Steve had shown up to graduation with it all in a U-haul, waiting for Billy in the parking lot.

“People are gonna talk,” Billy had said.

Steve had shrugged.

Billy had insisted they go back to the house one last time before they leave, though. To say goodbye. It was the one place in the whole town he had decent memories of. Steve had spread him out on his bed, had sucked at his nipples and his throat until Billy had begged him for more, and when they had fucked it had been so slow and gentle Billy thought he was going to die all over again.

Blindly, he reaches for Steve’s hand, and Steve takes it. They’re not the most demonstrative couple, most of the time. Billy doesn’t want to go around hurting Steve’s chances in the force, and Steve doesn’t want to go around making Billy uncomfortable. They don’t do this kind of stuff much, outside their own apartment. Robin thinks they’re fucking gross, but she seems to know it’s because she’s the only one who really sees them do shit like this. 

The house is the same as they had left it. It’s clean, because Steve’s parents pay a maid service to take care of it when they’re gone, but there’s no one there. Steve’s parents haven’t really talked to him since he told them he was getting a degree in criminal justice from a no-name community college and joining the police force. Steve doesn’t really talk about it. He’s got a few bucks saved up from Scoops and what he calls mental health compensation from his service at the shitty video rental store. They’ve both got some hush money saved up from the government paying them off. It’s enough to see them through school, but not much else.

Henderson is the first to show up, talking a mile a minute about everything Steve has missed since their last phone call two days ago. He’s convinced his English teacher is possessed, but Billy remembers her and he’s pretty sure she’s just normal nuts, so he lets Henderson talk and just sits there, watching Steve be a total dork.

The rest of the nerd herd wanders in bit by bit, and Billy finds himself sidetracked talking to Max, making sure she’s alright and nothing like what happened to him in that house is happening to her, tracking all the changes in her that he’s missed. 

He almost forgets why they’re there in the first place, until Steve’s gentle touch on his shoulder reminds him he said he’d call for pizza half an hour ago and he totally forgot, and Will Byers’ sharp eyes catch the whole interaction when no one else does.

Billy jerks his head towards the door, pretending he’s going outside to wait for the pizza. Will follows him almost immediately.

“You and Steve are…” Will trails off, looking almost pathetically eager.

“Me and Steve are together,” Billy says. It feels weird, coming out of his mouth, because he doesn’t ever say it like that. Back when things were new and uncertain, he’d said things like, _you’re my guy_ , and _baby, you’re the only one for me_ in bed and never out of it. When the dust had settled and he’d awoken to Steve slumped in the chair beside his hospital bed, they’d jumped straight into _I love you_ and never looked back.

Will swallows heavily. “Have you always been—“

“Gay?” Billy asks. “Yeah. I mean, I have. Steve’s not, he’s bi. You can ask him about it. You can ask me about it.”

Will looks at the ground, miserable. “I think I might be.”

“Okay,” Billy says. “Cool. Good for you?”

Will shoots him a look.

“Look, kid,” Billy says, wishing like hell he hadn’t quit smoking after Starcourt because he could sure use a prop right now even if it makes his chest hurt like crazy. “I’m not gonna be queer Gandalf or some shit, but I know what it’s like. I wasn’t even sure of what I was when my dad started beating me up for it. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing when I met Steve. But it all worked out. And your family’s cool, man. You’re gonna be fine.”

“I’m just sick of always being different,” Will says.

Billy shrugs. “Leave this shithole, you won’t be that different then,” he says. “Plus, no offense, but the geek squad in there isn’t exactly normal.”

Will sighs. “Can you tell me how you and Steve got together?” 

“I definitely can not,” Billy says.

Will perks up, shoots him a begging look from under his stupid hair.

“When you’re twenty-one,” Billy says. 

" _You're_ not twenty-one!"

Billy shrugs. "Sucks to be you, kid."

They stay outside a while longer, till the pizza comes, and when they head in, Will seems lighter, just a little.

**Author's Note:**

> WELL who thought the fic that started with me thinking "hey, it would be super hot if Billy was just like desperate for Steve's dick and in denial about it" would end up here? NOT ME, that's for sure. Gonna be real here, not sure if there will ever be more in this verse explaining how we got from story one to story two...
> 
> Let me know what you think and if you have any fucking clue what happened in between.


End file.
